Warehouses can be a hard place to light sometimes, can’t they?

The high ceilings, large facilities, and changing conditions can make them feel a bit…cavernous. These factors can all come together to make warehouses a difficult place to properly and safely light, and yet proper lighting is a crucial part of running and maintaining a warehouse.

Safety regulations, combined with the need for high visibility to properly pick, store, and shelve items, make proper lighting a crucial part of any warehouse operation. Like many other factors of warehouse design, however, this is easier said than done, and properly lighting your warehouse may require a combination of design, layout, and imagination.

How to Safely Light a Warehouse

Check for natural lighting

The first step when lighting a warehouse is to see what kind of options you’ve got for natural lighting. This can go a long way towards helping you determine your potential lighting layouts, as well as identifying the areas it needs the most help, as sunlight can do a lot of the heavy lifting during work hours for most of the year.

Is there a greater concentration of windows in one area? Do you tend to miss a lot of sunlight due to where your building is located, or does it tend to favor one side until sunset? Is there a ‘dark, scary corner’ that all the workers complain about not being able to see in? Check for these and other similar issues before revamping your lighting design to see where you can make the most difference.

Understand what makes your warehouse unique

Warehouses can seem to have a mind of their own sometimes, and each one is going to offer their own layout, design, and…quirks, for lack of a better term.

Take a look around for things like multi-leveled ceilings, larger groupings of windows, weird narrow corridors, and the like. Strange building design and odd geometry can impact how light travels throughout the building, and knowing your plan of attack is going to be crucial.

See if your shelves are obstructing the light

One of the biggest causes of lighting issues in a warehouse is when there’s something in the way. Industrial shelving, pallet racks, and even warehouse mezzanines can all obstruct the flow of light from the ceiling if they’re not arranged right, or even if they’re overburdened with items. Make sure there’s no light fixtures directly behind your shelves, and make sure everything is loaded up as per manufacturer guidelines to not over-burden your shelves, obstruct the light, or create a safety hazard.

Make sure you have the right lights for the job

Finally, the lights themselves will have a huge impact on visibility, and using the wrong sort of light can still be a problem no matter how cleared from obstructions they may be. Focus on using energy efficient, industrial-grade industrial LED lights that can reflect light across surfaces and provide lumination that meets any posted safety standards to make sure your team can actually see what they’re doing.

After all, isn’t that why you went to all this effort?